Weaving tapestry, words and worldview

My experience of the Vadafone mobile broadband is mixed. It gets the job done, but only if you are patient. It takes a couple of minutes to load the typepad to this page - after which it works OK. It will do, but only if i allow it to double as a patience tutor,

The hiatus between moving out of our previous home, and moving in a week later (this Wednesday) has been good as a rest, as reflection, but it does nothing to reassure that this move will work, or even that we will like the house we will now have to live in! We havn't seen it since we viewed it!!

So walking by faith isn’t so much a choice, as an inevitable result of previous choices. Perhaps taking up tapestry again is a way of creating new patterns as I work out from my own mind the intricacies and colours of the next stage of life. There is something sacramental in the slow, precise working of canvas, the choice and blending of colour, the subtle shaping of form using only 45 degree cross stitch, angles and tones, canvas grids and colours, intersecting in the woven texture of created work whose unity is dependent on the mind that brings them together.

So at times of major life change, and when my own life circumstances need significant attention, I revert to a Reflective Journal. My inner world has, as long as I remember, made most sense when I use words. So at times of significant change I use words to redescribe the world, to weave together images that help make sense of experiences that are confusing and disorienting. That's why this morning I was reflecting on my taking up tapestry again - I've never completely let it go, but I was wondering why it is now something I have returned to with a sense of relief, even urgency. And so the image of weaving and tapestry, combined with the weaving of words, becomes a way of paying attention to who and where I am. Stitches precisely pointed, words crafted to context, images growing on canvas and paper - the creative spirit reconfiguring colour and words, shaping the outer world as a way of reconfiguring an inner world in transition. 

For me words are amongst the most precious gifts we have. To be cherished, crafted, used with integrity and ethical wisdom, offered as gifts of care and communion, the fabric of conversation and truth-seeking, a palette of expressions to be mixed into meaning in the construal of inner worlds and the shaping of outer worlds. If all that sounds over-rhetorical, a tad overstated, I'm not arguing. But those are images that help me describe the importance of words in my own approach to God, the world and that inner reality that is me!

Time I was moved into the new house and with more to do than wax eloquent about weaving, whether tapestry, words or worldview.

e

Comments

[Daniel Mitchell]

Dr. Gordon,

Good luck on the move! Having moved this past Feb. from a comfortable flat in a medium city to an admittedly nice student dorm in a big city, I can say I don't envy you. I hope it goes well.

If at all possible, I'd love to see a picture of your tapestry when you're finished with it. It's funny - my old roommate was a second-generation Scots American and a piper; you're a Scot who is both a wordsmith and a weaver - my, you Scots are an artistic people! I love it! (I guess I should claim my own Scottish heritage as well, but as with most Americans, it requires going back a few hundred years down the old family tree...)

Thanks for sharing.
Peace,
Daniel